Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!

It seems to me this is a watershed moment. Every Republican must vote against this incompetent radical. No more pandering to the soft mushy middle. The Republicans better man up. The folks are fed up. There's more on the nomination of the pro-gun control judicial activist Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Barack Obama campaigned on the theme of a new era of transparency. Obama used that theme as a justification for the release of four highly classified internal Justice Department memos detailing strategies for interrogation of al-Qaeda detainees, over the objections of Obama's own Director of the CIA.

It's time to bring that same level of transparency to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The New York Times is reporting that each of the candidates on Obama's short-list was the subject of an 60-70-page memo detailing the investigation into her background, including judicial writings and other information gleaned by the vetters. Obama should release the memos on Sotomayor, as well as any other documents used in the decision-making process.

The release of the memos will have a positive effect on the debate over Sotomayor. One of the problems in assessing the nomination, and why I have not opined on Sotomayor, is that the public really doesn't know who she is or where she stands on important legal issues. This is a concern mostly from the right, but also from pro-abortion activists on the left.

Sotomayor has few if any significant judicial decisions on many issues, which is not surprising since as a trial judge or appeals court judge she was bound by Supreme Court precedent. To the extent published judicial decisions are important, those decisions are being carefully analyzed, but do not tell the full story of who a nominee will be once confirmed.

And Sotomayor clearly was someone who protected her record. The most disturbing aspect to me of the 2005 Duke Law School video, in which Sotomayor stated that appeals court judges make policy, was not her words. Those words can be explained away, as I'm sure she will do at the confirmation hearings.